Colorado Teamsters, CWA Build Momentum in Drive to Organize Denver City and County Workers

Across Denver, there's a movement underway -- an unprecedented union organizing drive of City and County of Denver employees who have long been denied the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement. Organizers from Teamsters Local 455 and Teamsters Local 17, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) are signing up members who seek the security and protection of a union contract -- airport employees, parks and recreation workers, city clerks, waste haulers and librarians.

It's a three-part process -- get authorizations from workers in 2025 and represent them under the Career Service Authority now; bargain for their individual contracts in 2026; and enforce those agreements beginning in 2027. Public sector workers at Denver International Airport can fill out a Teamsters Local 455 union application here.

The germ of an idea for the campaign sprang from the COVID pandemic, says Teamsters Local 455 Secretary-Treasurer Dean Modecker. "Everything changed after COVID," Modecker said. "People lost jobs or had hours cut. They had no voice." Then came the summer of strikes, he said, where unions began to right wrongs. "People were underpaid. Their benefits sucked. Workers began to fight. It was a labor monsoon going on." 

Teamsters Locals 455 joined Teamsters Local 17 and the CWA at the table to plot the way forward. First came the political lift, said Duane Grove, Teamsters Local 17 Secretary-Treasurer, to obtain the legal right to negotiate with the City and County over wages, benefits and working conditions. Unions prepped for a drive to get the 60,000 signatures necessary to place issue on the ballot. But the City Council and Mayor Mike Johnston endorsed the issue, put it on the ballot and scored a win.

At that point, said Modecker, "We needed some serious money and people." The IBT weighed in with $100,000 and a team of organizers. Locals 455 and 17 committed lost-time organizers and staff to the campaign.

"For the first time in a long time unions are working together hand in hand to do the right thing for these men and women who deserve exactly the same job protections members in the private sector have been able to negotiate for decades," said Modecker. "And we're going to get the job done."